Today’s unhappy smiley face is dedicated on the 41 year old woman who got buried today in our little town…

You guess it right, she died from cancer and has been going in and out of remission for years…

It started with a stomach cancer and seems that one spread no matter all the chemotherapy she underwent…

But 41 really is no age to leave this planet.

How many people need to die still before any government starts tackling healthy food, healthy water and healthy air?

Cancer are just cells that get bizerk and the easiest way to go bizerk is coming in touch with poison or call it:

• pesticides
• herbicides
• preservatives
• medicine
• …

If people start dying around my age, that’s frightening to say the least, so if people have to go around 40… that’s a clear reason for an unhappy smiley face for the rest of today…

But we had our neighbour over for a cop of coffee just now and she was talking about her son: a 40 something businessman, happily married with a child of 14 years old…

Happily married? Well, he just divorced his wife and got himself a new Thai bride. Thailand can be more than just an exotic holiday destination it seems.

Anyway, I still prefer this kind of news than the daily absurd killings on the TV news

I mean: a divorce is sad but a re-marriage is fun.

Where is there any good news about the Iraq war??? Just useless killings of innocent lives because there are some hidden interests that are really worth billions!!!

Yet it’s still February so no fruit available but ideal time to prune the roses before they start growing again due to a way too mild winter.

Meanwhile we are helping out the wife from our late friend: since he always drove her around shopping and she doesn’t have a driving licence, her children, friends and neighbours are her new "taxi-drivers".

Luckily my wife is close to her, so she can just drop by and see if anything is needed. Nothing can really replace a loving husband it seems. Which makes you wonder: whoever is left behind is in for a really hard time

It’s better than nothing but of course it hardly can make up for her loss.

But it just makes life a bit more easy especially for her children who have been helping her tremendously the months before her hubby died in hospital.

Apart from marrying the world’s most beautiful women, Brad Pitt hobbies include:

• interior design,
   
• architecture
   
• nature
   
• collecting functional metal art pieces
   
• collecting furniture.

Now this post is not entirely about this little brat, but more about retirement and hobbies. Although when it comes to marrying the world’s most beautiful women, it’s a wise choice not to wait until you are retired. Especially not when you made your fortune already being in your 30′s.

Hobbies and retirement

First question my doctor asked me at my yearly check up after I retired was: "do you have a hobby"? According to him, people with a hobby live much longer than people without a hobby.

Now for me that was a needless question, as I love to spend a lot of time in my garden. And I took up blogging as well, although it would be ideal to have a wireless Internet connection so I could go blogging under my cherry-tree in my garden

Dying standing up

I needed to write this post because this Sunday in church, our retired butcher just stood up and died…

For him, his shop was his life.

He only closed his shop earlier this year and like I said: his shop was his life… no more shop and the poor guy passed away…

What are ideal hobbies when you are retired?

Of course that’s entirely up to you. Just try to remember what you loved to do when you were a kid and pick up from there.

My brother in law who retired 2 years ago quit smoking and at the same time enrolled in a photography-computer course. Meaning he learns how to take a nice picture and then plays around with it in Photoshop making slide-shows and all that.

All you need is a simple camera, a simple computer and… lots and lots of time! It’s an ideal hobby, especially when you learn to look from a different angle to the things you see in your every day life.

It’s always fun to get an email from him, as his pictures are original, not the normal forwarded jokes you get from everybody else. It shows what he is doing and how the world looks around him. And it keeps him away from those deadly cigarettes!

He also subscribed on a website where he sells his pictures for a very small fee. That is: if you need a picture, you pay a few cents to put their pictures on your website.

Making pocket-money is always great when you are retired I find, I do miss the monthly paycheck that used to come in but I love the extra pennies I make like selling my chicken eggs

Not to mention my waffles and my wife’s cakes when people are not buying enough eggs. We could start a bakery but hello: we are retired and we just do it for the fun of it!

Now my brother in law is not making a fortune yet selling his pictures. Unfortunately, he is still a far way off to take pictures from celebrities like those 2 latest Brad Pitt hobbies… But again: it’s the hobby part that’s the most important part.

If you had an active social live or you have a big extended family, funerals seems to become part of life once you retire.

I notice it the most when we go to our senior gatherings: husbands suddenly don’t join because they are sick and a few months later they are no more. Few months after that a lonely widow returns to the gatherings and it’s up to the rest of us to bring some warmth into a cold period of their lives

Seriously: I took my wife to the doctor as she was having a flu and on top of that she couldn’t speak anymore.

Now I know lots of men would be very happy to have a wife like that…

Having said so, I drove her to the doctor who gave her an antibiotics jab on the spot. Although the only antibiotics we normally take are the ones we find in honey: this time her flu was getting really from bad to worse. A running nose is one thing, not being able to swallow and loosing your voice is another thing.

Anyway, gave her a warm cup of milk with some extra honey, and now she is happily sleeping away.

That gives me 5 minutes to write this post and then it will be me doing the cooking: Mashed potatoes, mashed anything to keep swallowing easy.

Best case scenario: the antibiotics works fast (that’s the whole idea for getting a double dose injected) and she can eat normally soonest. (And I can go gardening as I am eager to put some peas in the soil…).

Sad in many ways: first and foremost for his wife and children. He worked hard all his life and when finally the day of retirement comes, he was in the hospital in excruciating pain. Just imagine something wants to grow under your skull where there is no space whatsoever for expansion…

Secondly if it isn’t bad enough: he has been contributing for his retirement all his life, and he wont see any penny for it.

Thirdly: his dear wife only gets a certain % of what her hubby would have got… as if 1 person doesn’t have the same fixed expenses than 2 : I mean: she still needs to use electricity and heating…

And to make things even worse: his wife inherits his possessions. Of course what was his was hers, but according to the state it was his… And any inheritance: you need to pay taxes…

Sounds quite like a state ruled by vouchers…

Condolences to his family and friends…